


Over and Over

by Melody_Of_The_River



Series: Sleeping With The Enemy [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Cold War, I wrote this for a class, M/M, enemies to..., idk - Freeform, something
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:08:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21687340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melody_Of_The_River/pseuds/Melody_Of_The_River
Summary: More encounters between the two spies that absolutely, definitely hate each other.
Relationships: Levi/Erwin Smith
Series: Sleeping With The Enemy [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1563352
Comments: 7
Kudos: 36





	Over and Over

**Author's Note:**

> I kid you not, I wrote this for a class. And I'm posting it because I need to pass. If any of my classmates find this and go through all the other shit I've written, I'm sorry (but I KNOW you've read better and raunchier). Here goes nothing.

The General was playing again.

Levi couldn’t remember the last time he had seen him play. It had been ages ago, he was sure, and even then, the General had never been particularly good at it. His strokes had always been too rough, his presses brusque, blunt and brutish. Untrained and untamed; he pushed down on the ivory keys as if he wanted to bruise them. The piano, on the other hand, was a delicate instrument. But the General was not a man of delicate things.

Even Levi, as musically untalented as he was, could hear that the notes were completely out of place, the tune broken, fragmentary; jarring in places where its pianist would roughly strike the keys in frustration, and the instrument would mewl in protest. The piano was not an instrument to be struck. It was an instrument to be caressed, to be coaxed gently into submission with a care and compassion cultivated over a matter of decades. The General commanded loyalty by fear, but the piano was not so cowardly an instrument to be won over by that alone.

It was too perceptive for that, too perceptive not to realize the intentions of its players, too strong-willed to allow itself to be subjugated by them. It was an instrument for lovers, for people who loved so deeply and unselfishly that they let it consume them. Not for monsters like him, or the General. Levi had only ever seen one man, at least in his line of work, play the piano the way it deserved to be played; soft, bell-like notes, flowing together in a melody, as seamlessly as clear water in a rivulet. But then again, _that man_ had been the scariest monster of them all.

The sounds of the piano filled the hallway as he peaked through the slightly-ajar door. The General was sitting at his bench, the silhouette of his stiff back shrouded in the shadow of the 9 o’clock Muscovite sun, bony fingers struggling to play, too inflexible to reach the keys.

“ _Blyat_ ,” he cursed in frustration as he struck the wrong key once again. He slammed the fallboard down on the keyboard and turned around suddenly enough that Levi did not have the time to move away.

“Levi?” the man demanded, furrowing his brow at him. “Is that you, boy?”

The General’s blue eyes met his, and that hideous scar across his forehead flared in… anger? Annoyance? Some kind of displeased sentiment, Levi concluded – one that gave him no surety of what was to follow. Even after a lifetime of knowing him, he really was quite unreadable to him still.

Levi straightened his back, and ran a nervous hand through his undercut, trying to present his most innocent self.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “You called for me?”

The General’s eyes narrowed in scrutiny and he looked him over from head to toe before giving him a small, reluctant nod of affirmation. Levi scurried inside without argument, unwilling to test his luck further. He shut the door behind him just as the General reached for his walking cane to stand up.

“You’re early,” he complained.

“I apologize, sir.”

“Where did you learn your manners, huh, boy?” he scolded, “Did I never teach you _not_ to spy on people?”

Levi would have scoffed at that, if he could. But as it were, all that came out was this indignant noise halfway between a cough and a snort, as soon as his eyes met those of The General’s.

A sense of humor wasn’t exactly appreciated in the KGB.

The General walked towards his desk, thumping down against his seat, out of breath and reaching for a glass of water. The giant oak chair he sat in completely dwarfed his feeble, old body and Levi thought, not for the first time, that he couldn’t wait for the old man to just _fucking_ die already.

Levi had been on the planet some thirty-eight years now, and he had known the General for around twenty-five of them. He had never even known his own goddamn parents that long, and the General was not what he’d call, a particularly adequate replacement. Don’t get him wrong though, it wasn’t that he didn’t strike fear in Levi’s heart still, or in any other operative working under him, but it _was_ hard to take him seriously when he towered above the slouching man and could take him as easily as any of those sniveling boys he had known at school. Levi often liked to daydream what it would be like if he were to just drive a pen through the man’s eyes one of these days. If it came down to it, he probably would think of something more creative, but for the time being, it was enough to entertain himself with such mundane, housewife’s ways of killing him, while listening to him drag on.

“Are you even listening to me?”

“Absolutely, sir,” Levi replied, innocent enough not to arouse suspicion.

Of course, he would never walk out alive if he did do all of those beautiful things that he thought of doing. Gouge out his eyes. Hammer in his skull. Staple his tongue to his soft palette and pour bleach down his throat. It was so pitiable how Levi could think of only the most uncivilized, untidy ways to kill the man. He didn’t like to think of himself as a violent person, no, but a nice death for the General would, quite frankly, take the piss out of the whole thing, wouldn’t it?

Levi had estimated once how long he would survive if he actually went through with it. Three minutes, he had counted. Three minutes of peace and quiet, before the guards would storm in and – oh, had he not mentioned the guards yet? Right. Well, there were guards surrounding the building. The General’s favorites. “The Praetorian Guards,” they called themselves. Some Roman bullshit. He’d never really had much patience for the General’s soliloquies to know what that meant. Or patience in general, in fact. Right now, for example, it seemed to be stretching especially thin. His own life in exchange for the world not having to hear the General speak ever again, had never seemed like a more attractive trade.

“What’re you thinking about?” the General commented.

“Nothing, sir,” Levi tried to smile. 

The man frowned. “You’re awfully quiet today, then.”

“Am I?” Levi moved to take a seat.

“No, no, don’t sit down,” the General said, “We won’t be here for that long.” He reached inside his drawer and picked out a gramophone recording, “Go and play this for me, will you?” he said, pointing towards the golden gramophone at the far end of the room.

Levi took the square envelope from him, pulled out the vinyl recording and moved towards the player. After a minute or two of fumbling with the needles, the track began. 

“Huh. Isn’t this the same piece you were trying to play just now?” Levi blurted out. _Trying_.

The General scoffed. “I’ve always liked you, Levi. But sometimes, you really do push your luck.”

 _Fuck_ , Levi reprimanded himself for the slip-up. “I apologize, sir,” he said, folding his arms behind his back, _trying_ to embody the spitting image of a submissive soldier.

“But since you asked, yes,” the General said, clicking open the cigarette case on his desk. “It _is_ the one I was _trying_ to play, as you so eloquently put it,” he glared towards him. “You recognize it?”

“I think so,” he replied, “Totentanz, isn’t it? Liszt’s?”

“That’s right.”

“I see. So you were playing the ‘ _Dies Irae’_ part, then.”

“I was,” he coughed and lit his cigarette, then added, quieter this time, as if Levi were not meant to hear it “… sometimes I feel like I’m playing a requiem for myself-”

“I’m sorry?”

“Nothing, boy,” he said, tone stern once again. He waved a file towards him. “Here,” he said, “I didn’t invite you here for chit-chat, you know.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Stop fucking apologizing, boy, we both know you don’t mean it…” the man droned, taking another long drag from his cigarette. Levi did not comment, did not let the General’s eyes unsettle him, as he moved forward to take the file. The General’s gaze did not falter, watching Levi, mistrustfully. Levi did not back down, gazing back with an equally impenetrable look. They waited. The ticks of the grandfather clock in the corner punctuated the silence between them.

“Is there anything you would like to tell me, comrade?”

 _Tick_.

“No, sir. Should there be?”

_Tick._

“I’m not too fond of being lied to, boy.”

 _Tick_.

“Have I ever lied to you before, sir?”

The General narrowed his eyes at him.

“That toy of yours is getting out of control, you know…” he offered in lieu of explanation, “You gave him too much to play with last time.”

“Excuse me?”

The General clicked his tongue, and flicked his cigarette away to some forgotten corner of the room. He sighed, exasperated, exhaling out the curtain of smoke that obscured his gaze from view. Levi waited.

“Smith,” he answered finally, the name falling from his thin disease-stricken lips with the smoky exhale of tobacco.

Levi’s fingers parted the folds of the file, and shuffled through the pages.

_Tick._

A grainy, black and white, paper-clipped photograph stared back at him.

_Tick._

A blond man winking for the camera, amidst a hoard of people running from a fire.

 _Tick_.

Levi groaned.

“For fuck’s sake," he grumbled, "Not again...”


End file.
